Americans Support an Internet 'Kill Switch' According to Survey | Hacker News Reader

Americans Support an Internet 'Kill Switch' According to Survey

securityweek.com

17 pointsprivacyguru14 comments

Americans support a lot of crap they probably shouldn't and don't know a whole lot about. This is why we have a Republic, not a Democracy.

Edit: To put this a bit less glibly, there's a whole range of things that the "average American" doesn't know enough about to make a fully qualified decision. That's not to trash "average Americans" - I wouldn't do a whole lot better at making coherent, well-thought-out policies which take all available information into account if put on the spot - but it is to say that just because something polls well doesn't mean it should be policy. Our government is supposed to represent the best interests of the people, not blindly enact their will.

"average American" doesn't know enough about to make a fully qualified decision.

If voters aren't qualified for a direct democracy, what makes them qualified for an indirect democracy AKA republic? Wouldn't they just pick the wrong representation, given the inherent ineptness of the public? If the public is truly a fringe, and the government is supposed to represent the fringe, wouldn't the government just be a fringe?

"Our government is supposed to represent the best interests of the people, not blindly enact their will."

If they're not enacting the will of the people, then who's will are they enacting? What qualifies these folks to know the best interest of everyone else?

Well, first, it's an imperfect system, which is all we'll ever get. We're still human, after all.

I say "don't know enough" as a specific and non-judgmental quantifier, not an overall statement - in other words, while otherwise competent and capable, and possessing areas of expertise, the average person may not know enough about specific issues and the diversity of interests surrounding those issues to draft adequate policy, nor judge the quality of drafted policy. That's not to say they couldn't learn, but people simply don't have enough time to fully engage the issues of the day.

Because of this, we've elected to have a republic. Ideally, this means we choose gifted and dedicated people to represent us and to, as their full-time job, build up a body of knowledge and wisdom such to devise policies which best address pressing issues (Ideally.). This is a concession to the fact that we as citizens simply do not have the time to become experts both in our chosen craft and in the business of state. As to their qualifications, they're nothing but dedication, integrity, and intelligence. Ideally.

Obviously this isn't what we have, but it's the thinking behind what we wrote down a few generations back, and I think it's still valid.

The sad thing is that anyone using an Internet 'Kill Switch' would do far more damage than most of the "cyber attacks" that we know about. And if the ability was built, it would definitely become a target for cyber attacks.

> become a target for cyber attacks.

This, this, a million times this.

So to paralyze America my legions of terrorist followers no longer have to simultaneously attack 1000s of independent failsafe and redundant network switches at ISPs all over the country - I just have to post a "death to the president" message on facebook and a three-letter-agency will do it for me!

These surveys are usually spurious, because they don't state what questions were asked and who constitutes "the public". It's possible to get whatever results you want either by cherry picking the kind of people you ask, or by framing the questions in a way which is biased towards certain responses.

I bet if they asked a question such as "do you believe that the president should have the right to prevent you and everyone you know from using Facebook, Twitter and Gmail for an unspecified period of time?" the support level would be rather minimal.

If it was framed as "do you believe that the president should be able to temporarily suspend internet services to protect vital national security interests in an emergency?" probably the majority would be in favour. Protecting things in an emergency sounds like a good thing, it's vague enough so that it doesn't sound like something which would apply to you personally, and if it's only temporary then who cares?

These days many people who would not be classed as archetypal "nerds" are highly addicted to internet use, and in the past I've seen people having something close to a panic attack if they can't access their emails for half an hour.

I wonder if those surveyed realized that this would cut off their access to Facebook, Twitter, etc, or if many were too clueless to realize that.

In the article it mentioned "portions" of the internet. So I have to assume every one polled figured it would not be the part of the internet they are on but the part they(the bad guys)are on. If there was such a thing.

Like someone else mentioned. The consequences for such a thing are so much larger than what they are trying to stop.

The "kill switch" applies to "critical infrastructure" which does not include Facebook or Twitter IMO. If the attack was coming from Facebook I suppose they might get tempted, though.

For anybody who'd like a summary of the issue itself, I think Bruce Schneier covers the whole idea of an Internet Kill Switch pretty well here:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/07/internet_kill_...

I wonder what counts as an "emergency" and "cyber attack" and what is the extent of a "portion"?

These terms seem too vague for me, take this example: Someone tweets that Obama has killed a baby kitten, Obama could shut down Twitter because it's an emergency, he was falsely accused. He could shut down Facebook too, and all services that could be connected to Twitter to stop this cyber attack from spreading.

No disrespect, but I seriously doubt that the majority of the people(not just Americans) actually know how the Internet works, it's like asking a first graders to solve a differential equations.

The Internet just works fine by itself it does not need supervision from the US government, in fact it is one of the reasons it works so well.

Americans also support a government-sponsored lobotomy for themselves, to insert Patriotic God-Juice into their heads.

Why is this a surprise?

The U.S. is a success despite the majority of the American people, not because of them.

I thought they very idea of the internet was to create an unkillable network. This idea seems counter-productive and regressive.

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